


Momentarily Out of Action

by Duck_Life



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Demonic Possession, Gen, Possessed Charlie, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 05:09:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duck_Life/pseuds/Duck_Life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something's off about Charlie, Dean realizes when he meets her at the motel. Oneshot. Please R&R! Title from "Killer Queen".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Momentarily Out of Action

The motel Charlie calls him to reminds Dean of life on the road, bad coffee and molding mattresses and an existence he’s since shed behind him. Still, a sort of nostalgia tails along behind him as he knocks on the door.

“Hi,” Charlie chirps, poking her head around the edge of the door. “Come on in.” The motel room echoes every other one he’s ever been in, same tacky furniture in different variations, same dirty window pane. The wallpaper has pastel horses on it, and Charlie’s hair gives more vibrancy to the place than the flickering lamp by the bed can ever hope to contribute.

“Sorry Sam couldn’t come,” Dean says, slinging his jacket over one of the rickety wooden chairs. “He’s busy with-”

“Sam’s alive?” she interrupts, voice bladed. Then- “Sam’s alive! That’s… awesome!”

“Yeah…” Still panning around the room, the gears in his head don’t work as quickly as they might otherwise. “Yeah, why wouldn’t he be?”

“Just…” she says, “the trials. I thought…” Trailing off, her hand flaps by the mini-fridge as if she’s debating whether to get him a drink. “So Sam’s alive and he’s back at the, uh… the-”

“The bunker,” he supplies, the corner of his mouth twitching up.

“Right,” she says, shaking her hair back as if to shake off absentmindedness. “The bunker. The Men of Letters bunker.”

With his hand hovering over his jacket, Dean watches her. “Charlie, are you feelin’ okay?”

“Drink?” she says, evidently making up her mind and cracking open the mini-fridge. “Actually all I have is a half-drunk Coke.”

“Nah, I’m good,” he says while she grabs the Coke for herself, twists it open, but doesn’t take a sip. “What’ve you been doin’? Getting ready for the jubilee?”

“The…” she hesitates like she’s thinking. “Oh, right. Yeah, of course.” Her tone is flatter than the old soda in her hand, and very slowly Dean starts to see the loose screws in this whole visit, the way her call had been so vague, the long pauses in everything Charlie says. The whole thing is just off-kilter a bit, and it’s beginning to make his hairs stand on end.

“Listen, Charlie,” he starts, and maybe the warning in his voice gives him away, or maybe it’s the way his hand subconsciously drifts to an inner pocket, because she straightens up and narrows her gaze and it’s like every plane of her sharpens into focus. It’s a steely focus he’s only ever seen on her when she’s plotting battle plans, and yet even then there’s a tinge of excitement, of _Charlie_.

It happens suddenly, the transition of being certain this is Charlie Bradbury to being certain it isn’t. Nothing in her slanted gaze is familiar right now, and in one fluid movement Dean grabs his flask of holy water and splashes it at her, watching as the droplets form a smattering of burns, as smoke rises from her pale arms.

“Alright,” Not-Charlie sighs, eyes flashing black. “So I don’t win actress of the year.”

“Get out of her,” Dean demands automatically, pulling out an angel-killing blade (it doesn’t do much good for anything _but_ demons now) and wishing he’d dragged Sam along.

“Believe me, sugar, it’s no picnic,” she rolls off, mouth warping around the words, and distantly Dean berates himself for not testing Charlie the second he arrived. Or _giving her some damn protection against demons_. “She’s _loud_ ,” the demon says, tapping Charlie’s temple. “But then again, I love the red hair. Always have.”

Dean edges forward, switching the angel blade to his left hand and the holy water to his right, because no way in this demon’s hometown is he actually going to _stab_ Charlie Bradbury. Something in what she says sounds familiar though, and he glares forward. “Abaddon?”

“Hi,” she says, again mimicking Charlie’s eager voice. “Miss me?”

“Like hell,” he says, and lunges for her. Abaddon-as-Charlie skirts away from him and tumbles across the bed, the forgotten Coke bottle flying and spewing cola across one of the walls even as Dean tries to dash her with holy water again. Snapping, she throws him against the wall beside the nightstand, and the angel blade drops from his hand. He just barely manages to hang onto the holy water.

“You know,” she says, stepping towards him. Dean ducks his head, hands- one still gripping the holy water- desperately trying to wrangle away from the wall. “I’m starting to think that your little friend’s a nutjob. All the thoughts in here, buzzing around at once. ‘Oh, I want to go to Comic Con.’ ‘Oh, I hope Sam’s okay.’ Pathetic.” Still looking down, Dean feels her hand grip his chin, push his head upward until he’s looking into Charlie’s empty eyes, and he thinks he can feel the back of his head pounding in tune with his pulse, and dammit he should’ve made sure Charlie was safer. “I wonder,” says Abaddon, digging Charlie’s nails into the side of Dean’s jaw hard enough to leave semicircle marks, “what she would think about turning you into shredded wheat.”

And that’s when Dean spits his mouthful of holy water in her face.

Backing away and hissing as smoke curls around her face, Abaddon relinquishes her hold on Dean and he uses the opportunity to sprint across the room. If he can get the salt in the Impala, if he can buy enough time to get her in a Devil’s trap, if he can keep her still long enough to rattle off an exorcism-

All the ifs come crashing down around him as Abaddon regains her composure and hurtles toward him, singed and pissed. “Charlie,” he calls out, dodging the lamp that Abaddon throws at him as he circles the perimeter of the motel room. “Charlie, if you can hear me- just, uh…” He jumps out of the way of the chair that had held his jacket. “Keep calm and carry- oh _shit_ ,” he interjects as a table comes flying for him.

After struggling against Abaddon throughout the room for a little while longer, Dean eventually finds himself pinned by the throat to the wall with the Coca-Cola stain. Staring into a grin that isn’t Charlie’s, it occurs to him bizarrely, _I’m dying. In a crappy motel room. Again_.

Something about the realization drains him even as the demon queen throttles him with his best friend’s hands, and he can’t help but be _annoyed_ that it’s really going to end in a side-of-the-road cheapie motel with horse wallpaper.

And if it is going to end, he finds, he needs to say goodbye, and sorry, because Charlie deserves that. “Charlie,” he croaks, throat constricting as Abaddon clamps down, and maybe it’s the oxygen deprivation but he finds there’s only one way to say what he can to the girl possessed. “Charlie,” says Dean, “Charlie, I have been… I have been and always… shall-”

But he doesn’t finish, because with a shrill noise of frustration, Charlie practically throws herself off of him and stands there, panicked, in the middle of the room, eyes wide and green and _Charlie_. “Get it out,” she says, gesturing wildly to him. “ _Get it out get it out get it out_!”

“Prom night flashbacks.”

“ _Dean_ ,” yells Charlie, and he begins the exorcism, watching as the black smoke spools out of Charlie’s mouth and winds away, somehow furious even in its amorphous state.

-o-o-o-o-o-o

“That was a dick move,” Charlie maintains, tossing a piece of popcorn at Dean on the other side of the couch. It’s been hours and the two of them are only just calming down, settling into the den in the bunker after the havoc at the motel. “You know _Wrath of Khan_ makes me cry.”

“You hit me with a _table_ ,” he reminds her, tossing the popcorn right back to her, where she catches it in her mouth, and raises an eyebrow. Dean rolls his eyes.

“At least I got a sweet tattoo out of it,” she says, looking down at the still-raw inked anti-possession mark on her forearm.

“Not as cool as Leia in a gold bikini,” says Dean, remembering her other tattoo as he reaches over her knees to grab a handful of popcorn.

“What would you get?” asks Charlie, chewing thoughtfully. “If you could get a for-fun tattoo.”

Dean actually seems to consider it before saying with a smile, “A snake… shooting a gun… but instead of a bullet it’s another snake.”

Charlie blinks. “You just described the next SyFy movie.” 


End file.
